Two months after reporters found him, fugitive still at large in Mexico

Gary Marx and David Jackson, Chicago Tribune reporters

EL ESTUDIANTE, Mexico — When the Tribune revealed two months ago that gang member and fugitive Oscar Hernandez was living openly in this farming village, U.S. authorities said they would take steps to confirm his whereabouts in hopes of seeking his extradition.

But Hernandez apparently remains a free man.

Wanted in connection with the 1994 gun slaying of college freshman Armand Browning on Chicago's West Side, he continues to live with his wife and two children in a spacious family home beside the meandering Amacuzac River, according to recent interviews.

"He's still there," said one neighbor who spoke to reporters this month on the condition he not be identified. "He rarely leaves the house."

The resident said more than a dozen uniformed Mexican soldiers arrived in town in late November or early December and questioned Hernandez's neighbors about him, then climbed back into their truck and drove off without taking further action.

The case has exposed glaring deficiencies in fugitive apprehension efforts on both sides of the Rio Grande border.

On the U.S. side, local police and federal agents did not learn Hernandez had been living for 17 years in El Estudiante — where he was born and his parents own property — until Tribune reporters located him there in October.

But the case also underscores the sometimes tenuous relationship between U.S. authorities and their Mexican counterparts, who by law must do the actual work of capturing and extraditing fugitives inside that country.

"We don't have any statutory authority to conduct an investigation in Mexico. Any action taken by the Mexican authorities, they would be doing unilaterally," said Chicago FBI spokesman Ross Rice. "We can't go in there and get him. We can't surround the house. We can't take him out of the country."

On spring break from Hampton University, Browning, 18, was driving out of the suburbs with two friends when Hernandez allegedly began shouting gang slogans and fired six bullets into the car, killing Browning.

Authorities quickly learned that Hernandez had fled, but without an exact location they couldn't ask Mexican authorities to issue an arrest warrant in that country. The manhunt drifted for years with no visible progress.

Through interviews with Hernandez's relatives in Chicago, Tribune reporters recently determined that his family was from El Estudiante. Mexican government records led them to the address of Hernandez and his common-law wife.

After the Tribune reported on Hernandez's life in El Estudiante in late October, an FBI agent told the paper the U.S. would discreetly try to confirm Hernandez's location as a first step toward requesting the fugitive's extradition.

Returning to El Estudiante on Dec. 9, the reporters learned that Hernandez was still living there.

Rice, of the FBI, said U.S. agents were not aware of any Mexican military operation and added that the FBI did not know whether Mexican authorities ever confirmed Hernandez's location. Rice would add only that the investigation is ongoing.

The Cook County state's attorney's office said it has "not been notified by the FBI or any law enforcement agency that they have located Hernandez" but said Cook County will seek Hernandez's arrest in Mexico "as soon as we receive notification" that he has been located.

In Mexico, federal and state authorities declined to comment on the case.